Peter Bright has summarised some of the post-fork discussions on the WebKit mailinglists. "Now that Google is going its own way and developing its rendering engine independently of the WebKit project, both sides of the split are starting the work of removing all the things they don't actually need. This is already causing some tensions among WebKit users and Web developers, as it could lead to the removal of technology that they use or technology that is in the process of being standardized. This is leading some to question whether Apple is willing or able to fill in the gaps that Google has left." There's a clear winner and loser here.

I don't know, to me Blink sounds better than Webkit already. I'd take Google as the company running the show over control-freak and highly-proprietary Apple, which only really cares to lock you into their iCrap and Macs. Their browser on Windows, last I checked, was crap; it's been a while, but I seriously doubt anything has changed. I never had any intentions of running an Apple browser anyway, or owning one of their obscenely-popular little gadgets. The future of Opera sounds much better now that it's been confirmed that they are not going to be using Apple's version of the engine. Good riddance Webkit.

Quite the opposite - if Apple does its work properly. The WebKit code will be cleaner and better tied up, with Apple's own JavaScript engine and multiprocess architecture. Blink's code too, with Google's own engine and architecture.

As long as standards are respected, and quirks and bugs are smashed, nobody loses.

The JS engines are essentially interchangeable from the perspective of web developers. CSS is the primary venue for fragmentation, and HTML to a lesser extent.

The problem here is that Google was contributing support for variable assignment in CSS, which is a W3C draft standard proposed by Mozilla and also supported by Google. Now that Google has left WebKit, Apple does not intend for WebKit to support this standard.

Nonsense. The article takes the stance that if these organizations choose to stay with WebKit, that Apple may abandon them... which itself is nonsense. If these organizations go with Blink, then neither Apple nor these organizations have a webkit problem.

Well, the WebKit2 architecture was done by Apple and merged in and improved over time. That is work outside of the tree and later time-intensive fixing and maintainence that are not visible in such a diagram. Same for Google's massive 1GB test suite for Chrome/V8 which is probably a higher segment in there diagram color but got removed with Blink.

Save is only to say something changed. Two WebKit's. Now I am waiting for those that complained weeks ago, when Opera joined WebKit, that there are to less independent browser engine implementations to raise and praise this new situation. Seems they are all in holidays.

I said that if Webkit users stick with Apple's WebKit but continue to have dependencies on Google's contributions, that is that user's and Google's problem; if other WebKit users use Google's webkit, Apple doesn't have a problem (i.e. a relations problem) obligating them to support code Google contributed and then abandoned (if they refuse to support it, I actually imagine they will assist transitions).

The majority of argument in the article is about code that does not ship/is only available to "developers" who know they are "beta-testing".

The example you are referencing is only in Chromium. It's recent, beta code of a beta feature. Apple is not responsible for supporting this code. Intimating that it is is nonsense. Safari (on desktop and mobile) has always been competitive and a good exemplar of a browser provider in supporting and improving CSS (both when it led and when it followed in supporting new standards).

The example you are referencing is only in Chromium. It's recent, beta code of a beta feature. Apple is not responsible for supporting this code. Intimating that it is is nonsense. Safari (on desktop and mobile) has always been competitive and a good exemplar of a browser provider in supporting and improving CSS (both when it led and when it followed in supporting new standards).

Yes, it had *because* the engine behind was the same: webkit.

Now that pretty much all WebKit contributors but Apple are shifting elsewhere/leaving it, nobody will keep WebKit moving forward supporting and improving its feature sets if Apple don't step in.
And if the graph shows something, it's that up to 50% of last one or two years's improvements made on webkit was not from Apple.

They lost half of the horse power behind the web engine powering internet user experience on their products and, worse, the half one that was working for free, as in speech *and* beer - from Apple's PoV.
That's the price for trademarking "webkit".
Nice job, Cupertino's guys.

Comparing commits is a horrible measure. Claiming 50% of the improvements to WebKit are directly connected to Google is nonsense.

Safari was released in 2003. Chrome was released in 2008. It took Safari less than a year to be a "competitive", often superior, browser (at least in terms of engine) to FireFox, IE, and Opera in terms of engine reliability, speed, and features. For five years, Apple was largely on its own, development-wise; however, adoption of WebKit by others began in full force before Chrome existed.

There is little evidence that everyone is abandoning WebKit for Blink. Google, obviously, and Opera. There are no other announcements. Those who are dependent on V8 or other Google code probably will and probably should switch, but that isn't certain. I would imagine that Google's plans for the future are more specific to their individual goals than Apple's plans for their browser (i.e. Google wants to be able to create a complete OS out of the internet, it wants sites with umpteen million ad, tracking, and analytic scripts to run faster; Apple wants an open alternative to its own platform that doesn't have any dependencies on proprietary tech).

Suggesting that Apple cares or needs to care about others when they rarely have while still having a high-quality engine that suits their needs and continues to develop at very much a competitive pace while its still likely to have continued support from others (including Google) and/or could have some of its dev eased by "copying" from Blink and other engine development is just plain nonsense.

Also, it's my view that neither Apple, the majority of its users, nor myself will care. You seem awfully concerned to be arguing with me that it's not much of a worry... when that is exactly my point.

Although it may not be the primary consideration here, Google is forcing Samsung to make a decision about TouchWiz. Their choice will shed some light on their forward plans -- as an Android vendor or a defector.

Gave Chrome on the desktop a try. Didn’t like it, uninstalled it. Firefox is my backup browser. Safari is my main browser when on a Mac. When I was on Windows, Firefox was my primary browser. Never really liked Chrome on Windows or OS X. Hate IE even more.

Downloaded Chrome for iOS. Played with it for a week. Didn’t like it, uninstalled it.

The only thing I liked about Chrome for iOS was the pop-up menu when you touched a hyperlink. Safari’s pop up has been somewhat spotty lately after the introduction of the iPad mini. I suspect Apple has made it less touch sensitive due to the lack of bezel on the iPad mini. It sucks that it’s so imprecise now on the full size iPad.

I'm an Apple fan but I'm realistic, yes I know how it sounds. But I actually applaud Google's move as long as they don't fragment the WEB as Internet Explorer did back in the 90's.

On the other hand I really don't like Chrome although I'm not saying Safari is better. Chrome has its V8 which is the only good thing about it but if you download Apple's WebKit builds and compare it with Chromium builds (I think it comes with Blink), WebKit's is faster at loading websites (of course disabling Chromes site pre-fetching). I have no idea why Safari isn't. Maybe Apple is being cautious.

I just wish Apple comes with it's own V8 alternative.

They are both companies one is selling stuff the other sells attention, so they are not good or evil they are both the same. People complain a lot about WebKit age and complexness but remember it is a fork of KHTML which is not young, on the other hand remember at the beginning there was a crash between KHTML and WEBKIT teams regarding features, so is not like Apple wanted it to be complex, they had to satisfy KHTML developers to get their blessing.

Apple is not paying attention to Safari because is not a device seller, is just a money pit. They wanted a browser to stop fragmentation of the WEB in favor of Internet Explorer and end up it's partnership with Microsoft. And now there are many neutral alternatives.